Go Rin No Sho
by
Chris Dee

THE BOOK OF VOIDPeople in this world look at things mistakenly and think that what they
do not understand must be the void. This
is not the true void. It is
bewilderment.

Cold.
There was cold.
And black.
A sour taste.
A bizarre sticky concoction smeared on his face.
Morning dew and dried blood.
Maybe his own. Maybe not.
Which was worse?

Batman’s eyes opened as waterless slits,
swollen, bloodshot, and stinging with the shock of early daylight.
Through a jackhammer pounding in his brain, he realized he had no idea
where he was.

Outdoors.
Hard. Stink of damp
concrete. An alley.

Batman rolled painfully onto his stomach and
rose to his knees, only to be doubled over, his gut wrenching so tight with dry
heaves that he nearly passed out.

As soon as he was able, he croaked a single
word “Car” into the communicator and sunk back into a torpor of aching,
burning, and nausea. What seemed
like hours later, the quiet hum of the Batmobile pulled him back to awareness,
and he hauled the mass of his aching body into the car.

“Home,” he managed weakly.

***Until you realize the true Way, you may think that things are correct and in
order.
However, if we look at things objectively, from the viewpoint of laws of the
world, we see various doctrines departing from the true Way.
***

Hours later, Bruce lay in bed, staring at a
stark ceiling. He had only the
dimmest recollection of returning to the cave, changing in the vault, and
climbing the stairs to his room.

There had been a moment in the vault, hanging
up the cape—a moment where he had it pieced together—a punk that turned
out to be not a lone assailant but a lookout for a street gang. Jumped from
behind, a taser, then a brick. The details of such fights blurred into a
thousand others…
but he beat them back…
then beat them down…
hard. Then the alleyway…
He had stumbled back to where he
thought the Batmobile was…
realized it wasn’t there…
and collapsed.
He was able to recall all of that in the vault, for that one split
second, but found he couldn’t hold the thought and still work his arm to hang
up the cape. That moment’s switch
in focus to coordinate eye, hand, cape, and hook had dissolved the fragile
thread of memories into another confused blur.

Only slightly sharper was the memory of Alfred
in the hallway when he got home. A
dismayed “My word” that Bruce wasn’t meant to hear concealed in a hurried
“Very pleased to see you home, sir. Your
bed is turned down, and I shall of course not disturb you until you ring.”

The only perfectly clear memory he had was
Selina.

Alfred’s voice, a dismayed “My word”…
And then Selina emerging from her suite, looking so pale and so tired,
and holding Nutmeg.

“Good. You’re
home.”

Bruce assumed he’d nodded, turned into his
room, and collapsed onto the bed. He
honestly couldn’t remember. That
one moment was so startlingly vivid, but the rest was all vague, dim and wispy
fragments lost in a whirlpool of ache and nausea.

Any other man would surely begin to doubt
himself. Any other man or woman,
waking up god knows where coated in god knows what, would surely take at least a
few minutes to reconsider their vocation. If
crimefighting meant mornings like this, was it really what they wanted to be
doing with their lives?

Bruce had no such doubts.
His only thought was that a hot shower might revive him.
He got up, walked to the bathroom, and turned on the water…
Then he turned… slowly… to a sight his peripheral vision had
registered… in the mirror. He saw
a reflection of a man he didn’t recognize.
He wasn’t sure who it was, but it certainly wasn’t Bruce Wayne. Bruce
Wayne’s skin wasn’t gray. Bruce
Wayne didn’t let his cheeks grow stubble like that. Bruce Wayne didn’t have bags
the size of a thumb under his swollen, bloodshot eyes. Bruce Wayne didn’t have a
mouth that hung limply open, cheeks and lips sagging like a wet sock on a
curtain rod.

The wraith before him blurred and faded as the
mirror coated with steam from the shower.
The hot water did revive him a little, enough to recall the events of the
night more clearly. The gang, the
fight, he beat them. Then the
alley. No Batmobile. Alfred’s voice, a dismayed “My word” that Bruce
wasn’t meant to hear. And then
Selina emerging from her suite, looking so pale and so tired, and holding
Nutmeg.

“Good. You’re
home.”

What was it about that moment that struck him?

He toweled off, wrapped himself in a thick
terry robe, and collapsed again onto the bed—thinking, for some reason, about
Walt Whitman.

That was the thing about mornings like this:
when the thoughts started coming back, there was no telling what crazy
associations they might bring with them. It
would have delighted the monks he had studied with in Tibet.
The holy men would fast and meditate for days seeking a blank
nothingness; they thought that inner void would bring revelation.
Bruce never bought it. He
knew there was value in exhaustion. He
knew it was necessary to break down the body and drain the mind for the
breathing and martial arts moves to become instinct.
There was no time in a life or death fight to rely on conscious strategy.
It had to be embedded into the deepest animal core; it had to become
reflex. That is undoubtedly what the ancestors of those monks knew,
and they concocted that elaborate philosophy to achieve it.
But to expect true insight?
“Glimpsing the no-thing and opening the mind-flower in a moment of Satori?”
No. That is where the
Western Man in Bruce balked. That
is where the Scientist rebelled. A
bad morning like this was simply part of the package.
It went with being Batman. There
were upsides and downsides to the life he had chosen. This was a downside. Waking
up in the occasional alleyway, unsure of how he got there.
Getting home in a haze. Alfred’s voice, a dismayed “My word”
that Bruce wasn’t meant to hear. And
then Selina emerging from her suite, looking so pale and so tired, and holding
Nutmeg.

“Good. You’re
home.”

He knew his perceptions were dulled from the
strain of the night, but that one word—coming from her—seemed to hang in the
hallway between them like the cloying sweet of cut grass in the heat of heavy
summer air.

Home.O quick mettle, rich blood, impulse, and love! Good and evil! O all dear to
me!
O dear to me my birth-things—All moving things, and the trees where I was
born—the grains, plants, rivers;

Walt Whitman.
From Leaves of Grass. The
one called Longing for Home.

O my heart! O tender and fierce pangs—

He had wanted more Selina in his life.
He wanted her here, at Wayne Manor, living in his house; he wanted to
come home at night knowing she was there waiting in the bed.

It was the anniversary of his parents’
murder. It was a difficult time for
him. Even those that cared for him
called the days leading up to it Hell Month.
Even friends like Lucius pulled away.
Even family like Dick. Even
Alfred.

O longings irrepressible! O I will go back
to old Tennessee, and never wander more!

He wanted her here.
He wanted to come back from that patrol, from the ritual visit to that
cursed alley, and know she was there, in his house, in that room, accepting him
as he was, loving him for the man he really was. He wanted… home.

“I am not hiding out in my own home”

He’d been so caught up in their argument he
hadn’t even heard it.

“Nothing to talk about, Handsome. You need to go back to the drawing board on this one. I
don’t like being ordered around. I
am not hiding out in my own home on your say so, and I am not going to put up
with a bunch of imaginary bimbae…”

She had called the manor her home. The cave, her home.
His house, his cave… Selina called them home.

And he hadn’t even heard it.

***Polish the twofold spirit of heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze of
perception and sight. When your
spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away,
there is the true void.
***

Bruce got up, dressed, and crossed the hall to
Selina’s suite. She wasn’t
there, but Nutmeg deigned to sniff his fingertips and rubbed her head against
his hand. Whiskers was in his usual
spot in the portrait gallery, looking down onto the Great Hall, but when he saw
Bruce, the cat came to the top of the landing and followed him down the stairs.
At the foot of the stairs, Bruce slowed and watched his feline escort.
Predictably, the cat took the lead, heading towards the morning room.
There, as expected, Bruce found Selina.

“It still works. The
little furball led me right to you,” he noted.

Selina looked up, ignoring the allusion to
bat-chases past, and made an observation of her own.

“You look like hell.”

“Thanks for noticing,” he grumbled
sarcastically. “I’m better than
I was an hour ago; I’ll be better an hour from now.
I figure I’ll give my head that much longer to clear, then catch up on
the log entry…” He trailed off. This wasn’t what he came to talk about. And there was no way to smoothly transition from log entries
that wouldn’t write themselves to—

“Decided on a boat yet?”

His lip twitched as the transition became
unnecessary.

“It’s more complicated than that,” he
said.

“I see.
So there’s going to be confirmation hearings or something?”

The twitch tugged harder on his lip,
threatening a full smile.

“I’m getting the Gatta; you’re
right, she’s the one I want.”

“Well now.
Those are some new words for you. Did
you just learn them?”

Bruce ignored this.
Impossible woman! Not that
he expected her to make it easier for him, but she could at least refrain from
making it harder. Meanwhile, the
demented little furball had hopped into her lap and was purring up at him like
his admission about wanting the Gatta was a victory for all catkind.

“I’m going to pass on the Lamborghini and
the new plane. No phantom trips.
When we’re both feeling better, when Gotham is quiet enough, we’ll
take the Gatta out for a day or two.”

“There’s no point in a new car. Bruce Wayne would have to have the cutting edge: the fastest,
sleekest, most powerful sports car made. And
there’s a new Bugatti coming out that’s far too similar to the Batmobile for
Bruce Wayne to even consider buying it.”

“Bruce, what aren’t you telling me?”

“And a new plane is just, well, between Wayne
One, the Cessna, the Batwing and the two jets owned by Wayne Enterprises—
What do I want with another airplane anyway?
It’s not… like…”

“Bruce.”
Her voice was impossibly gentle, the lengthy pause even more so.
“What is it you’re trying to say?”

“I can’t have both you and the playboy
cover, Selina.”

She looked up at him evenly. It was obvious from the discussion of the Gatta, but
he would say the obvious anyway “And I can’t give you up.
So the playboy is… over. And
now… I’m not sure… where that leaves me.”

“Ah. Well,
reinventing a bit of the public persona isn’t exactly fun.
But it’s not like it was forced on you by some no-talent bottom feeders
trying to make a name for themselves by pissing all over your reputation, to the
extent that you had to mount an actual goddamn stage show just to set the record
straight. Or, for that matter, it’s not like you’ve got to make wholesale
changes to your masked life, up to and including scrapping the longest unbroken
winning streak since the advent of killjoys in capes,
finding yourself plopped into the middle of a readymade family (yellow ruffles). Not to mention, it’s not like living with you is exactly a
day at the beach. So what was your
problem again, Bruce?”

The word “pussywhipped” hovered on his
lips, but the self-preservation instincts honed over a thousand patrols held it
back.

“The problem is that ‘Bruce Wayne’s
life’ and my life have always been two entirely different things. If they’re going to be sharing more common ground, I’m
not sure what the ramifications of that might be.”

“So what?
Feel your way as you go.”

“I don’t do that.
I plan the journey before I set out.”

“Dull.”

“Prudent.”

“Control freak.”

“Cautious.”

“Bruce, you’re the best there is. You’re the most staggeringly brilliant mind of your
generation. Are you seriously
telling me that Gladys Ashton-Larraby is going to throw you a curve you can’t
handle?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Let’s make it the point.
Because I really do think, and I’ve thought for quite a long time, that
the obsessive control thing is beneath you.
That’s for those other guys, the mediocrities, that are afraid and they
should be. Because they know—down deep, they know—that they’re not good enough to handle whatever comes
along. They want to control
everyone and everything around them, because they don’t trust themselves.
They can’t improvise. They
can’t deal with what might happen on its own.
They don’t have the stuff. Bruce,
that’s not you. That is so not you.
You can handle anything.”

Bruce felt his chest push slightly outward, an
involuntary response. The woman he
loved looking up into his eyes, telling him he was wonderful, and his chest
swelled. He took a step closer,
placing a gentle arm around her neck, and pulled her in, leaned down himself
until their lips were touching.

A kiss.
Deep and penetrating.
The primal man was aware he just agreed to something.
The civilized man had no idea what.
Whatever it was, he would find out soon enough.
Whatever it was, he would deal with it.
In the moment.
As he was.

***In the void is virtue and not evil. Wisdom
has existence, principle has existence, the Way has existence.
Spirit is nothingness.
***